Second interim budget discussed at RSF School District

RANCHO SANTA FE — At the Rancho Santa Fe School District March monthly board meeting, Superintendent David Jaffe discussed the progress of the second interim budget report. He told the board of trustees that the next step was to begin the process of developing the budget for the 2017-18 fiscal school year.

Jaffe told the board that while they had been through the budget process before, he felt how their new director of finance Bradley Johnson would bring a wealth of expertise.

“We’ll have this budget in a good spot,” Jaffe said.

He then opened the floor to Johnson. He started by sharing that after the second interim reports, they will start the budget process for next year.

“We will also look through the next few years to make sure that whatever assumptions we make moving forward, we know the full impact of those,” Johnson said. “That could be evaluating the programs such as David’s been doing, staffing, and cost to benefits that may be increasing such as presented in the last meeting. So we’ll factor in all those assumptions.”

What Johnson was referring to in the last meeting was based on a chart by Capitol Advisors, which addressed how CalSTRS and CalPERS contribution rates may increase over time.

Johnson noted that another feature both he and Jaffe were looking into was in reference to including the district and site administration in the budget development.

According to Johnson, the next phase of the budgeting process would be starting in the days ahead.

“And we’ll start to bring back reports to the board prior to getting it adopted before the end of the year,” Johnson said.

Board member Scott Kahn wanted to know if there could be more expansion reflecting the budget regarding the fixed costs the District pays. Although their District was small, he said, there was still overhead.

“It would be useful to get a better sense of what the costs are that we incur simply because we’re a small district,” he told Johnson.

Kahn then added the idea of what the impact would be if there was a fluctuation on either spectrum in student enrollment.

“How would that impact things?” Kahn wanted to know.

Kahn said having this would help the board get a better sense of how things would play out in terms of pension and other matters.